HP's Pavillion dv2 Goes On Sale, Gets Unboxed

While the market for netbooks continues to grow, AMD has been notable for its lack of any real presence in the sector. Rather than looking to go into competition with Intel's Atom processor, AMD has its own Neo processor, which is now debuting in HP's Pavillion dv2 notebook. The Neo platform is aimed above that of what would commonly be described as a netbook, offering more processing power along with 12 inch screens rather than than the 10 inch or smaller models commonly found with the Atom platform (though we have seen some larger exceptions to this appearing). The inclusion of ATI graphics and the fact that the dv2 runs Vista Home Premium x64 means that it is edging towards a fully fledged laptop. The guys over at cnet have managed to get a hold of a dv2 and have taken a few unboxed shots. We were told at back at CES in January that prices would start at $699, and the configuration that cnet grabbed came in at $749, which isn't too far away. You can also buy that very same configuration right now direct from HP. For that price you get a 1.6GHz Neo processor, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD, 1280x800 LED screen, Radeon HD 3410 graphics, 802.11 a/g/n and an external DVD-RW drive.

$750... Nope. Dell's selling their Inspiron 13 starting at $399 now. This really is a full-fledged laptop but still in a tiny package and for a price comparable to the netbooks. Of course, I wouldn't buy the base model as it uses a Celeron CPU. *shivers* But you can upgrade that and a couple other things and still be around $500. If only I was in the market for a laptop right now.